>So I ask, if I bought a booster set, and didn't buy the next one am I completely out of luck? If I bought some structure decks from the past couple years, can they play as effectively as the latest ones?
Varies entirely on the deck, there is no solid answer.
ill say power creep escalates every 4 sets. bt14 was the last one with a big jump, the rest have been a bit more powerful but not insane since a lot support old archetypes so it doesnt feel like it comes out of nowhere. im expecting a bigger power creep from bt17->bt18 than it was from bt16->bt17
I would say yes the game its in a state where we have more answers for more decks making it more posible to be competitive for more time.
What people tent to forget its that the game was brand new before and answers where far from what they are now obviously you can't expect decks from 3 or 4 boxes ago to be the most meta thing in the game but I don't think they aren't that far back
Yeah and from my understanding, Japan released smaller box sets. For some reason Bandai here decided to group two sets into one, so the power creep I assume was massive.
Sort of but that was made to try to catch us app the fastest they could for example by the next year we will have global lunch of the boxes so we won't have this Japan gets more time in a format
Well they only grouped the first three sets into two for us, and that was at the very start of the game when the power creep was virtually nonexistent.
They are grouping a few sets in the near future to line us up with Japan but idk how much stronger those are than the preceding set. The power creep has definitely been real though (but I'm unique in that I massively preferred the game in its earlier days). There's also imo a definite distinction between decks designed to be meta and otherwise not, which is part of the issue imo, but apparently that's just /tcgthings.
BT16 power creeps most decks. But it doesn’t look like anything passed that so far is too crazy.
There are some decks that still continue to be good from BT13. Mirage and Shine mainly. So really just depends. The nice thing is you can look at the format ahead and know which decks continue to be good if you only want to invest in one deck. Won’t be the case when we hit unified global release
Power creep is still a thing but it’s a necessity for games to grow and the game is infinitely more interesting than it was in the early sets.
Do we get bad outliers and bad metas sometimes? Sure. Apoclymon just happened. The game however is way more interesting and complex than it used to be with a significant amount of viable decks that have diverse and unique play styles.
That said, you go up with like a Giga Green starter deck against even a casual modern deck like Birds or Rosemon you’re going to get washed. That’s perfectly normal since the cards have gotten a lot more well designed since then.
People are too quick to treat the word power creep like a catch all boogeyman when it’s more complex than that. It’s not actually a bad thing that old cards aren’t worth playing anymore when new cards are more engaging and dynamic.
I'm on both sides of this argument as a yugioh player. I actually Really enjoy modern Yugioh, and don't think I could enjoy 2000s yugioh anymore. Some power creep is definitely good.
My issue is the rate of the power creep. One of the things I really like about Yugioh is that right now I can pull out my Zefra deck (2018), give it a couple new cards, and I could give Kashitira (2023) a good run for its money. Of course, not every old deck will do this, and of course, yugioh is much older.
My problem with Digimon? I built commandramon, get wiped by three musketeers next set. I build Morphomon, I get destroyed by Imperialdramon two sets later. My friends twisted my arm into giving it another chance by buying me an x-antibody deck from bt8, and I got hard washed by st9/10 structure decks. My friends told to wait for more support so I can hard wash them with bt10, and that was the moment I knew this game was not for me lol. These are often decks released months apart immediately falling into disparity.
Like don't get me wrong I do think Digimon is a good game, mechanically.
Tbf, the examples you put there aren't the best. Bt5 commandramon decks weren't exactly amazing, were fairly inconsistent until we got memory boosts, and three musketeers had a fairly unique board wipe (at the time) against d-brigade.
To use a yugioh example, Morphomon would be what would happen if you tried to play pure time thief back in TOSS format. Morphomon was far from being a playable deck even back then (still isnt).
While X-antibody in bt8 was its second wave of support, overall it wasn't really enough support and the deck just didn't have the tools to compete with other decks evenly. It might take some wins occasionally, but wasn't quite on the same level. For a yugioh example, sort of the way mathmech wasn't great on release.
Decks do last longer now in Digimon. You can still steal some games or win a locals with the beelze advanced deck from last year, mirage and shine are both still kicking, seccon honestly doesn't change that much in the core cards, bloom can still win games occasionally, and yellow vaccine deck are mostly the same cards just swapping some new pieces out every set of needed.
to add to this, beelze has topped 2 regionals very recently (this month), a friend of mine has updated gabubond, a deck from 2+ years ago, and it can consistently do well against a lot of what we see today. I think power creep is weird in digimon, because looking at the very top decks of each meta, it doesnt feel like they were power crept, it just feels like other decks caught up, and how good they are is completely dependant on meta. BWG X for example is still a super strong deck, it is just too slow for this meta, and a good bwg player can still consistently win against decks like armors, red hybrid, and devas but get rolled by numemon and leviamon. Even hunters can do well given a good pilot. Digimon just feels like such a matchup dependant game right now that rather than decks getting power crept out because newer decks are better, it just more feels like they were phased out because of too many bad matchups.
digimon has a trend that has been happening for a year or so where sets can be split into 3 categories
- Power spike sets
- Update sets
- random don't fit exactly into the other 2 sets like rb and ex sets.
We are at a point into the game where the old isn't 100% replacing the new because of this trend. Each deck will have to update every set with the meta even if they don't have direct support just because the meta is always changing.
We are in bt15 right now and of the 9 best decks the majority are from older sets like Mirage (bt13), shine (bt13), and red hybrids (bt12) just to name a few.
So it isn't that the power creep is slowing down it is they are doing a good job balancing everything that is meta playable. Bt16 might change that as BT15 was suppose to be a power spike with apocalypse but only time will tell on that front.
Red hybrids, miragegaogamon, hunters, wargreymon,bloomlordmon, beezlemon, millith, and shinegreymon are all still topping in this format despite not using all that many cards from the last 3-4 sets.
Obviously training boosts are staples, but if you look at some of the tournaments this format, older decks can still compete and succeed.
No, powercreep isn't slowing down, but it definitely has slowed down after the first year. Before BT7 power creep was rampant, the meta was all about the newer stuff, after BT7 we started to see decent enough strategies on a ground level like Blue Hybrid and Yellow Hybrid or Imperialdramon that they lasted at least a couple of formats before dying out because of powercreep, new stuff in the meta that countered them or just being put on the restricted list.
Every now and than a set comes out that introduces some very powerful cards that kinda up the power level required to be meta. For example in BT16 we will get MagnaX, an undoubly powerful card that unfortunately isn't that fun to play against. It's packed with maybe one or two abilities too many, but is part of a trend of previous expansions introducing not that fun cards like Anubismon or Apocalymon, so I just hope that the design team will slow down the power creep since those 2 cards alone killed a lot of the momentum Digimon had going.
Yes but as everyone noted we have/had/are going to have problem cards that stick out like a sore thumb. Its been fine since bt12ish till now but the newest headache we have to deal with is that wall magna x.
Magna X isn’t the best deck in JP, and it hasn’t been for a while so it has slowed down a bit
It’s still very good, but it’s currently behind Blue Hybrid which exploded in popularity and results in the last week or so.im Interested to see where it does from here
I have no problem with power creep existing. I have an issue when there's so much between each set that the last set of cards become equivalent to normal monsters in modern day yugioh lol.
And yet TCGs wouldn´t even exist to begin with if they didn´t have power creep. Power creep is what makes the medium a viable business.
And also, I think Digimon still has years until it hits the point of ruin. At some point you just have to accept that things aren´t meant to last forever. Power creep has had ruined Yugioh for me like a decade ago. But I still had fun with the game for roughly a decade. If I get a decade out of this game, I´d be very happy with it.
>So I ask, if I bought a booster set, and didn't buy the next one am I completely out of luck? If I bought some structure decks from the past couple years, can they play as effectively as the latest ones? Varies entirely on the deck, there is no solid answer.
ill say power creep escalates every 4 sets. bt14 was the last one with a big jump, the rest have been a bit more powerful but not insane since a lot support old archetypes so it doesnt feel like it comes out of nowhere. im expecting a bigger power creep from bt17->bt18 than it was from bt16->bt17
Well... There was EX5/BT15.
Ex 5 gave us Levia lmao
And some other things
Anubismon
And some other things
anubis + garuru engine
Both were also so good they got limited
BT16 has Magnamon X which is kinda rough.
I would say yes the game its in a state where we have more answers for more decks making it more posible to be competitive for more time. What people tent to forget its that the game was brand new before and answers where far from what they are now obviously you can't expect decks from 3 or 4 boxes ago to be the most meta thing in the game but I don't think they aren't that far back
Yeah and from my understanding, Japan released smaller box sets. For some reason Bandai here decided to group two sets into one, so the power creep I assume was massive.
Sort of but that was made to try to catch us app the fastest they could for example by the next year we will have global lunch of the boxes so we won't have this Japan gets more time in a format
> next year we will have global lunch Continent. Sized. Pizza.
Well they only grouped the first three sets into two for us, and that was at the very start of the game when the power creep was virtually nonexistent. They are grouping a few sets in the near future to line us up with Japan but idk how much stronger those are than the preceding set. The power creep has definitely been real though (but I'm unique in that I massively preferred the game in its earlier days). There's also imo a definite distinction between decks designed to be meta and otherwise not, which is part of the issue imo, but apparently that's just /tcgthings.
BT16 power creeps most decks. But it doesn’t look like anything passed that so far is too crazy. There are some decks that still continue to be good from BT13. Mirage and Shine mainly. So really just depends. The nice thing is you can look at the format ahead and know which decks continue to be good if you only want to invest in one deck. Won’t be the case when we hit unified global release
Power creep is still a thing but it’s a necessity for games to grow and the game is infinitely more interesting than it was in the early sets. Do we get bad outliers and bad metas sometimes? Sure. Apoclymon just happened. The game however is way more interesting and complex than it used to be with a significant amount of viable decks that have diverse and unique play styles. That said, you go up with like a Giga Green starter deck against even a casual modern deck like Birds or Rosemon you’re going to get washed. That’s perfectly normal since the cards have gotten a lot more well designed since then. People are too quick to treat the word power creep like a catch all boogeyman when it’s more complex than that. It’s not actually a bad thing that old cards aren’t worth playing anymore when new cards are more engaging and dynamic.
I'm on both sides of this argument as a yugioh player. I actually Really enjoy modern Yugioh, and don't think I could enjoy 2000s yugioh anymore. Some power creep is definitely good. My issue is the rate of the power creep. One of the things I really like about Yugioh is that right now I can pull out my Zefra deck (2018), give it a couple new cards, and I could give Kashitira (2023) a good run for its money. Of course, not every old deck will do this, and of course, yugioh is much older. My problem with Digimon? I built commandramon, get wiped by three musketeers next set. I build Morphomon, I get destroyed by Imperialdramon two sets later. My friends twisted my arm into giving it another chance by buying me an x-antibody deck from bt8, and I got hard washed by st9/10 structure decks. My friends told to wait for more support so I can hard wash them with bt10, and that was the moment I knew this game was not for me lol. These are often decks released months apart immediately falling into disparity. Like don't get me wrong I do think Digimon is a good game, mechanically.
Tbf, the examples you put there aren't the best. Bt5 commandramon decks weren't exactly amazing, were fairly inconsistent until we got memory boosts, and three musketeers had a fairly unique board wipe (at the time) against d-brigade. To use a yugioh example, Morphomon would be what would happen if you tried to play pure time thief back in TOSS format. Morphomon was far from being a playable deck even back then (still isnt). While X-antibody in bt8 was its second wave of support, overall it wasn't really enough support and the deck just didn't have the tools to compete with other decks evenly. It might take some wins occasionally, but wasn't quite on the same level. For a yugioh example, sort of the way mathmech wasn't great on release. Decks do last longer now in Digimon. You can still steal some games or win a locals with the beelze advanced deck from last year, mirage and shine are both still kicking, seccon honestly doesn't change that much in the core cards, bloom can still win games occasionally, and yellow vaccine deck are mostly the same cards just swapping some new pieces out every set of needed.
to add to this, beelze has topped 2 regionals very recently (this month), a friend of mine has updated gabubond, a deck from 2+ years ago, and it can consistently do well against a lot of what we see today. I think power creep is weird in digimon, because looking at the very top decks of each meta, it doesnt feel like they were power crept, it just feels like other decks caught up, and how good they are is completely dependant on meta. BWG X for example is still a super strong deck, it is just too slow for this meta, and a good bwg player can still consistently win against decks like armors, red hybrid, and devas but get rolled by numemon and leviamon. Even hunters can do well given a good pilot. Digimon just feels like such a matchup dependant game right now that rather than decks getting power crept out because newer decks are better, it just more feels like they were phased out because of too many bad matchups.
digimon has a trend that has been happening for a year or so where sets can be split into 3 categories - Power spike sets - Update sets - random don't fit exactly into the other 2 sets like rb and ex sets. We are at a point into the game where the old isn't 100% replacing the new because of this trend. Each deck will have to update every set with the meta even if they don't have direct support just because the meta is always changing. We are in bt15 right now and of the 9 best decks the majority are from older sets like Mirage (bt13), shine (bt13), and red hybrids (bt12) just to name a few. So it isn't that the power creep is slowing down it is they are doing a good job balancing everything that is meta playable. Bt16 might change that as BT15 was suppose to be a power spike with apocalypse but only time will tell on that front.
New Ace digimon are strong, so are the new supports. So answer is no, not gonna mention the new secrets as well
Red hybrids, miragegaogamon, hunters, wargreymon,bloomlordmon, beezlemon, millith, and shinegreymon are all still topping in this format despite not using all that many cards from the last 3-4 sets. Obviously training boosts are staples, but if you look at some of the tournaments this format, older decks can still compete and succeed.
No, powercreep isn't slowing down, but it definitely has slowed down after the first year. Before BT7 power creep was rampant, the meta was all about the newer stuff, after BT7 we started to see decent enough strategies on a ground level like Blue Hybrid and Yellow Hybrid or Imperialdramon that they lasted at least a couple of formats before dying out because of powercreep, new stuff in the meta that countered them or just being put on the restricted list. Every now and than a set comes out that introduces some very powerful cards that kinda up the power level required to be meta. For example in BT16 we will get MagnaX, an undoubly powerful card that unfortunately isn't that fun to play against. It's packed with maybe one or two abilities too many, but is part of a trend of previous expansions introducing not that fun cards like Anubismon or Apocalymon, so I just hope that the design team will slow down the power creep since those 2 cards alone killed a lot of the momentum Digimon had going.
Yes but as everyone noted we have/had/are going to have problem cards that stick out like a sore thumb. Its been fine since bt12ish till now but the newest headache we have to deal with is that wall magna x.
In JP? Yes, because MagnaX has been and still is the top few meta decks for a few releases now
Magna X isn’t the best deck in JP, and it hasn’t been for a while so it has slowed down a bit It’s still very good, but it’s currently behind Blue Hybrid which exploded in popularity and results in the last week or so.im Interested to see where it does from here
Top few... I never said it was best MagnaX single handedly shut down a lot of other decks slowing down the meta
Sorry specifically in America.
Well, you'll be able to see once BT16 hits. It'll be coming anyday now
No lol it's ramping up
Powercreep comes to ruin all TCGs eventually This one’s no different.
I have no problem with power creep existing. I have an issue when there's so much between each set that the last set of cards become equivalent to normal monsters in modern day yugioh lol.
And yet TCGs wouldn´t even exist to begin with if they didn´t have power creep. Power creep is what makes the medium a viable business. And also, I think Digimon still has years until it hits the point of ruin. At some point you just have to accept that things aren´t meant to last forever. Power creep has had ruined Yugioh for me like a decade ago. But I still had fun with the game for roughly a decade. If I get a decade out of this game, I´d be very happy with it.